Abstrakt

Parental breakup has, on average, a net negative effect on children’s education.
However, it is unclear whether this negative effect changes when parental separation
becomes more common.

OBJECTIVE

We studied the variations in the effect of parental separation on children’s chances of
obtaining tertiary education across cohorts and countries with varying divorce rates.

METHOD

We applied country and cohort fixed-effect models as well as random-effect models to
data from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey, complemented by
selected macro-level indicators (divorce rate and educational expansion).

RESULTS

Country fixed-effect logistic regressions show that the negative effect of experiencing
parental separation is stronger in more-recent birth cohorts. Random-intercept linear
probability models confirm that the negative effect of parental breakup is significantly
stronger when divorce is more common.

CONCLUSIONS

The results support the low-conflict family dissolution hypothesis, which explains the
trend by a rising proportion of low-conflict breakups. A child from a dissolving low-conflict family is likely to be negatively affected by family dissolution, whereas a child
from a high-conflict dissolving family experiences relief. As divorce becomes more
common and more low-conflict couples separate, more children are negatively affected,
and hence, the average effect of breakup is more negative.

CONTRIBUTION

We show a significant variation in the size of the effect of parental separation on
children’s education; the effect becomes more negative when family dissolution is more
common.